


A Clockwork Orange

by Abagail_Snow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hijacked Peeta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 01:00:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abagail_Snow/pseuds/Abagail_Snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being the adventures of a young man … who couldn’t resist pretty girls … or a bit of the old ultra-violence … went to jail, was re-conditioned … and came out a different young man … or was he?  </p><p>The early hijacking of Peeta Mellark.</p><p>Prompts in Panem Visual Prompt: A Clockwork Orange</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Clockwork Orange

He can't remember how long he's been there.  Days, maybe weeks.  Probably weeks. 

At first he was held in fine quarters, in a room beside Enorbaria.  The trays of food left on his bedside table were piled high with savory dishes, and the bed was dressed with clean linens.  Whatever the reason for his capture, he was to be kept well and healthy looking.

Peeta couldn't take advantage of his comfortable accommodations though.  He hadn't a clue what their plans were for him, and he didn't intend on living to see it.  

They bring him food and games to entertain himself, but Peeta sits in the window through the day and night, unmoving.  He hopes that if he can stare at the horizon for long enough, he'll be able to see to where Katniss is, and he'll know that she's safe.

They don't like his plan very much, because it doesn't agree with theirs. 

After he fails to impress at his first interview with Caesar, he's moved to a different cell.  One in the far off wing of the Palace where the garish decorations turn to sterile white walls with bars in all the windows.  His room is beside Johanna's.  He never sees her in person, but every night he can hear her screams ring clearly through the walls.

He wonders what she's screaming about, and when he'll join her in her chorus.

He spends every hour of the day replaying the Games in his head.  He tries to dissect the moment it all went wrong and he searches for the way out -- from the first reaping to this moment here. 

He works back further and further into the recesses of his mind, lost in an endless maze.  Perhaps there was a kiss that could have been more convincing, or a touch that could have lingered longer.  He tries to fix things along the way, but every path ends with him locked in this cell.  He starts back at the beginning, working his way through again. 

There's no time for sleep.  He won't find rest until this war is over, and he's sure that Katniss is safe.

He rarely speaks anymore and his doctors and guards think he's catatonic.  They taunt him and tell him things that they shouldn't to get a rise out of him.  When he's placed in the spotlight in front of all of Panem, those are the words at the tip of his tongue.

_Dead by morning._

The next day, the entire staff that's been watching him has been replaced, and he can see blood on the walls.

When he's removed from his cell now, it's no longer for public appearances.  He has a new purpose now.  Torture, he assumes.  He's wrong.

The room is cold and empty.  The tiles are large and cover the floor, walls and ceiling.  They're slate gray, the color of coal.  Made of graphite, he thinks.  That's the only thing they really learned in school, and for some reason, right now, it's the only thing he can remember.

He's strapped to a metal chair in the center of the room.  His wrists are cuffed to the arm rests, and his ankles to the legs of the chair.  If he struggles against restraints, the cold metal digs into his flesh until it bleeds.  He can feel something again.  That's nice.

There's a cutout on the wall he faces with three monitors embedded in it.  They flash different images and Peeta's eyes jump around frantically to catch them all.  Birds, woods, cave, beach, mutts, mutts, mutts, mutts, mutts.

It's too much.  He closes his eyes tightly and waits for it to end, but he can still see the images behind the lids.  He waits for darkness.  He misses the darkness.  He misses the time that his mind could rest.  He's so tired.

He can hear the door slide open behind him, but he doesn't see it.  The nurse is dressed in all white, and she carries a sterile looking metal tray full of syringes.  She adjust the headrest on the back of his chair and draws a leather strap across his forehead, buckling the end so tightly that he's afraid the pressure will cause his eyes to pop out of his head.  They wouldn't like that, but he would.

She lifts a needle to his eyelid, and all he feels is a small pinch, and then nothing at all.  His lid becomes paralyzed, and no matter how hard he tries, he can't blink.  He can see his golden lashes on the edge of his vision lengthen and turn black from whatever she injected.

His eyes become so dry that it stings like tiny cuts when he tries to look around the room.  It become harder to focus too, but the nurse steps into his line of sight, a long shiny needle in hand.  The image sharpens, and he realizes that he recognizes her.

Katniss.  It's Katniss.

She smirks as she pushes the needle into his vein, intent on slowly killing him.

No, he tries to shake his head, but the restraints hold him in place.

Katniss isn't here.  She's a projection.  This isn't real.  Katniss is safe.

He can feel the poison as it enters his bloodstream.  It's cold and it makes his arm feel heavy.  He balls his hand into a fist as if the force will resist the liquid from tainting his blood.  The walls around him begins to glow and Peeta watches as Katniss is swallowed in silver until her entire body is plated.  The light from the room reflects off of her, turning everything shiny.  He can't look away, he can't blink.  The light burns his eyes, and there's nothing he can do.

“Who is Katniss Everdeen?” she asks.

His mind is blank. He fights to find the words. It seems like a trick. Obviously this isn't Katniss before him. He can't forget her.

“She's my lover,” he answers through the haze.

She leans forward to kiss him. The injections keeps his eyes from closing, allowing for him to see that as they kiss, hers are wide open. She focuses on something far off over his shoulder that the restraints prevent him from seeing. But on the screens behind her, the entire scene plays.

She kisses Gale outside the fence, her fingers curling into his chest as she melts against him.

Katniss is not Peeta's lover. Her heart belongs to Gale.  Who is she then?

Another day passes and he's strapped into the chair and filled with poison.

“Who is Katniss Everdeen?” the metallic Katniss asks.

“She's my friend,” he says. She may not have loved him, but he can recall moments where she tried to protect him in the Arena. He can't find the memories anymore. Only the feelings.

Katniss opens her lips and a swarm of tracker jackers spill from her mouth to attack him. She cackles wildly as he struggles to fight them off. They pierce his skin with their stingers, and it feels just like the syringes that drip cold venom into his blood.

The images that play on the screen are from the Games, when Katniss cut the tracker jacker nest from the tree. She knew that he was at the base of the tree, and that the nest would surely kill him.  She tried to kill him. She wanted him dead.

“Who is Katniss Everdeen?” she asks on another day.

Peeta's tired of thinking about her.  It's taking too much energy to make sense of it all.  His eyes are frozen when he tries to close them.

 _Together._ He remembers her telling him before the cannons didn't sound.

“She's my ally.”

The screens come to life again, but this time they're not flat images.  He's there -- in the cave.  It's dark now and he can feel the heat of the thermal sleeping bag, and the dampness of the water pooling in the plastic sheet.  But everything glows.  Why is it glowing?

The mockinjays perch themselves at the opening of the cave and sing sweetly to him, he can hear Katniss's voice in their song and it brings him comfort.  The relief doesn't last long, because suddenly their tune is off key, and their beaks grow and sharpen.  They flap around him like the hive of tracker jackers and peck into his flesh until he's torn apart.  They are no longer mockingjays though, it's Katniss now, straddling his waist as she stabs a knife into his chest.  He can feel the sting of the blade and his insides cry out in pain.  The blade shimmers, drenched and dripping with his blood.

“Who's Katniss Everdeen?”

“She's my enemy,” he says, and he can't recognize the sound of his voice.  It's cold, and unforgiving.

This isn't real.  This never happened.  His mind tries to recall the cave.  They protected one another, she risked her life for him.  There were kisses, lots of kisses.  She loved him.  No.  That wasn't real either.

He can't remember anymore.  He's tired.  So tired.

The knife won't kill him though.  He wish it would.

“Who's Katniss Everdeen?”

He gasps for breath, and his paralyzed eyelids fall closed before snapping open again.  His vision is clouded and dark, but it's the clearest he's seen in days now.

“She's a mutt.”

 


End file.
